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50 Book Challenge 2019 Part Seven

977 replies

southeastdweller · 20/10/2019 17:25

Welcome to the seventh, and possibly final, thread of the 50 Book Challenge for this year.

The challenge is to read fifty books (or more!) in 2019, though reading fifty isn't mandatory. Any type of book can count, it’s not too late to join, and please try to let us all know your thoughts on what you've read.

The first thread of the year is here, the second one here, the third one here, the fourth one here, the fifth one here and the sixth one here.

How've you got on this year?

OP posts:
PermanentTemporary · 01/01/2020 22:54

Just a note for me - not reposting my list as I only got to 32. My books of the year were Milkman by Anna Burns and Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman. Goal for 2020 is at least 50 with more from the library. See you on the new thread and thanks to all.

bibliomania · 03/01/2020 10:10

Late to the party, but for the record:

  1. The Rise & Fall of Adam and Eve, Stephen Greenblatt
  2. King of the World, Celia Fremlin
  3. Tombland, CJ Sansom
  4. Bad Feminist, Roxanne Gay
  5. The Long Shadow, Celia Fremlin
  6. Jog on, Bella Mackie
7. The Bookshop at 10 Curzon Street: Letters between Nancy Mitford and Hayworld Hill
  1. Viking Britain, Thomas Williams
  2. Reading Allowed, Chris Paling
10. I'd Rather Be Reading, Anne Bogel 11. My Life with Bob, Pamela Paul 12. Wasted Calories & Ruined Nights, Jay Raynor 13. The Other Side of Silence, Philip Kerr 14. Love Story with Murders, Harry Bingham 15. The Cactus, Sarah Haywood 16. Lizzie Siddal, Lucinda Hawksley 17. The Whites, Harry Brandt 18. My European Family: The first 54,000 Years, by Karin Bojs 19. I'll be There for You, Kelsey Miller 20. Prisoner's Base, Celia Fremlin 21. March Violets, Philip Kerr 22. A German Requiem, Philip Kerr 23. The Unexpected Joy of Being Single, Catherine Barber 24. The British: A Genetic Journey, Alistair Moffat 25. This is What Happened, Mick Herron 26. The Trouble-Makers, Celia Fremlin 27. Primate Change, Vybarr Cregan-Reid 28. Lab Rats, Dan Lyons 29. Wish you were here: England on Sea, Travis Elborough 30. The Wych Elm, Tana French 31. The Stranger Diaries, Elly Griffiths 32. So me, Graham Norton 33. The Sixth Extinction, Elizabeth Kolbert 34. With Bold Knife and Fork, MFK Fisher 35. How to Behave Badly in Renaissance Britain, Ruth Goodman 36. Coming Clean, Kimberley Rae Miller 37. Eternal Boy: The life of Kenneth Grahame 38. About Time Too, Penelope Mortimer 39. Their Finest Hour and a Half, Lissa Evans 40. The Wandering Vine, Nina Caplan 41. The Coddling of the American Mind, Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt 42. The New Poverty, Stephen Armstrong 43. One Hot Summer: Dickens, Darwin, Disraeli and the Great Stink of 1858 44. Dreaming in Chinese, Deborah Fellows 45. A Walk Along the Wall, Hunter Davies 46. To Love and Be Wise, Josephine Tey 47. Clothes, clothes, clothes, music, music, music, boys, boys, boys, Viv Albertine 48. When in French: Love in a Second Language, Lauren Collins 49. The Pale Criminal, Philip Kerr 50. Old Baggage, Lissa Evans 51. The Bellweather Revivals, Benjamin Wood 52. The Gentle Art of Tramping, Stephen Graham 53. Civilisation, Kenneth Clark 54. Close to Home, Cara Hunter 55. A House of Ghosts, W C Ryan 56. Seven Signs of Life, Aoife Abbey 57. The Importance of Being Aisling, Emer McLysaght and Sarah Breen 58. A Sucky Love Story, Brittani Louise Taylor 59. In Search of England, by HV Morton 60 All the Single Ladies, Rebecca Taufner 61. Gene Eating Giles Yeo 62. The Temptation of Forgiveness, Donna Leon 63. Dawdling by the Danube, Eric Enfield 64. The Drop, Mick Herron 65. The Silence of the Girls, Pat Barker 66. Cracked: Why Psychiatry is doing more harm than good, James Davies 67. The House on Vesper Sands, Paraic O'Donnell 68. Lethal White, Robert Gilbraith 69. Worse Case Scenario, Helen Fitzgerald 70. A Cure for Heartache, Mary Jane Grant 71. Greenbanks, Dorothy Whipple 72. Travels with Epicurus, Daniel Klein 73. My Sister the Serial Killer, Oyinkan Braithwaite 74. Herring in the Smoke, LC Tyler 75. No Way Out, Cara Hunter 76. The Secret Garden: Oxford Revisited, Justin Cartwright 77. Waterlog, Roger Deakin 78. This Thing of Darkness, Harry Thompson 79. Hard Pushed: A Midwife's Story, Leah Hazard 80. Queenie, Candice Carty-Williams 81. In the Dark, Cara Hunter 82. Why Mummy Doesn't Give a Fxxx, Gill Sims 83. Home Grown: How Domestic Violence Turns Men into Terrorists Joan Smith 84. In the Days of Rain, Rebecca Stott 85. How to Treat People, Molly Case 86. Duty Free, Mani Mohsin 87. The October Man, Ben Aaronovitch 88. The Heartland: Finding & Losing Schizophrenia, Nathan Filer 89. The Stone Circle, Elly Griffiths 90. The Trauma Cleaner, Sarah Krasnostein 91. Smallbone Deceased, Michael Gilbert 92. Those People, Louise Candlish 93. Lost Dog, Kate Spicer 94. The Cost of Living Deborah Levy 95. Flash Count Diary, Darcey Steinke 96. The Hoarder, Jess Kidd 97. The Passage, Justin Cronin 98. Things in Jars, Jess Kidd 99. The Twelve, Justin Cronin 100. The To-do List & Other Debacles, Amy Jones 101. As Kingfishers Catch Fire: Books & Birds, Alex Preston & Neil Gower 102. London in Fragments: A Mudlark's Treasures, Ted Sandling 103. Joe Country, Mick Herron 104. On Chapel Sands, Laura Cumming 105. The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs, Steve Brusatte 106. The City of Mirrors, Justin Cronin 107. The Body Lies, Jo Baker 108. The Bad Mothers' Book Club, Keris Stanton 109. Behind the Chalet School, Helen McElland 110. Like a Tramp, Like a Pilgrim, Harry Bucknall 111. This is Shakespeare, Emma Smith 112. The Way, the Truth & the Dead, Francis Pryor 113. Seven Lean Years, Celia Fremlin 114. The Chalet School Revisited, Sheila Ray et al 115. Confessions of a Bookseller, Shaun Bythell 116. It's All in Your Head, Suzanne O'Sullivan 117. Fierce Bad Rabbits, Claire Pollard 118. Footnotes, Peter Fiennes 119. The Prison Doctor, Amanda Brown 120. The Dark Side of the Mind, Kerry Daynes 121. Fasting and Feasting: the Life of Visionary Food Writer, Patience Gray, Adam Federman 122. Meet me in the In-Between, Bella Pollen 123. The Warrior: A life of war in Anglo-Saxon Britain, Edoardo Albert and Paul Gething 124. A Knife to the Heart, Barbara Nadel 125. Before the Coffee Gets Cold, Toshikazu Kawaguchi 126. Station Eleven, Emily St John Mandel 127. The Scholar, Dervla McTiernan 128. A Half-Baked Idea, Olivia Potts 129. The Long Call, Ann Cleeves 130. Twas the Nightshift before Christmas, Adam Kay 131. Mudlarking, Lara Maiklen 132. Lowborn, Kerry Hudson 133. Rosewater, Tade Thompson 134. Ghostland, Edward Parnell 135. I must belong somewhere, Jonathan Dean 136. Gotta Get Theroux this, Louis Theroux 137. Time Song: Searching for Doggerland, Julia Blackburn 138. The Midnight Line, Lee Child 139. Civilized to Death: The Price of Progress, Christopher Ryan 140. Also Human: the Inner Lives of Doctors, Caroline Elton 141. Everything I know about Love, Dolly Alderton 142. I Never Said I Love You, Rhik Samadder 143. Patrick O'Brian: A Very Private Life, Nikolai Tolstoy 144. Food Fights and Culture Wars, Tom Nealon 145. The Other Wife, Claire McCowan 146. The Hunting Party, Lucy Foley 147. Once, Twice, Three Times an Aisling, Emer McLysaght and Sarah Breen 148. Medieval Bodies, Jack Hartnell 149. Smoke and Mirrors, Mick Herron 150. Once Upon a River, Diane Setterfield

The last book was a good one to finish on - loved having heroes to cheer on and proper villains to boo. Also liked the Thames setting - brought back fond memories of walking the Thames Path a couple of years ago.

I've been stingy with the star ratings, but fiction-wise I enjoyed various dystopias (the Justin Cronin Passage trilogy, Station Eleven and Rosewater) and the pitch-black humour of Helen Fitzgerald's Worst Case Scenario. In non-fiction, I enjoyed reading about the healthcare profession, including mental health (notably Nathan Filer's The Heartland and Suzanne O'Sullivan's It's All in Your Head). There were some good books about writers (Fierce Bad Rabbits by Claire Pollard and Footnotes by Peter Fiennes) and some compelling memoirs (I'm singling out Rhik Samadder's I Never Said I Loved You). There was also some non-fiction where the authors won me over to their subject by sheer enthusiasm (The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs, by Steve Brusatte, As Kingfishers Catch Fire, by Alex Preston and London in Fragments, by Ted Sandling).

My stats are approximate as I don't know everyone's gender and ethnicity, but I read just over half female writers, just over half non-fiction, and just over half library (all on about 58%). Happy with those. Less pleased that I managed about 6% BAME authors and a feeble two books in translation.

Now over to the 2020 thread!

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